[ctrlc-root]

If you're arguing for proper storage of guns, I completely agree with you. If you're arguing that we should reduce gun ownership to save lives, you're ignoring how many lives are saved by private ownership of guns. Unfortunately, no one keeps track of this statistic, but the CDC estimates between 500,000 and 3,000,000 lives are saved in any given year [0]. This study only provides an estimate, but still, compare that to 13,000 firearm related murders [1] and 22,000 suicides [2, Table 6 on page 33]. I think we need more data but from what I've seen so far it seems to me private gun ownership is a net benefit.

0: https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/3#15 1: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr66/nvsr66_06.pdf

[fjsolwmv]

You wildly misquote your source, which makes it hard to take your comment as good faith.

The source actually says:

> Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008. > On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey.

It is a huge leap to say that approximately every defensive use of a firearm prevented a death. It does not come anywhere close to passing the sniff test, as we don't see unarmed people dying of crime in the massive numbers implied by your misquote.

[ctrlc-root]

Did you keep reading?

> A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun-wielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.

I agree that it's not a definitive link, which is part of why I said we need more data, but the it's not non-existent either. I wish police departments would track and report this statistic like they do murders and suicides.

[trymas]

I am amazed, that 0.2-1% of population would be murdered every year.

Have similar statistics been acquired in other western countries, but with much more strict gun ownership laws, i.e. people can't protect themselves from violence?

It sound to me that it's a vicious circle, isn't it? Guns are easy to get -> bad people get guns -> good people need to get guns to protect themselves -> everybody is "fealing threatened for their lives".